Toy vehicle play sets are popular toys which are known to provide entertainment and excitement to an end user. These play sets typically include one or more track configurations intended to guide a toy vehicle, such as a 1/64 scale free-wheeling die-cast toy vehicle. The track configurations may also include a mechanism for propelling the vehicle or call for the vehicle to be propelled by hand.
To bring increased entertainment and excitement to play sets, track configurations may incorporate jumps into these play sets by which a traveling toy vehicle is briefly separated from the track to ultimately rejoin the track at a downstream location, or to enter a second track portion spaced apart from the first track portion. However, these attempts have been limited due to the complexities of ensuring that the launched toy vehicle lands on the second track portion in a proper orientation to thus allow the vehicle to continue its course of travel. Furthermore, these attempts have been limited in that the consistency of the distance traveled by a launched vehicle has varied, causing the vehicle to miss the landing target and/or fall off the track.
Accordingly, a toy vehicle play set is desired which can provide the entertainment and excitement associated with a toy vehicle being launched from a launching ramp at a predetermined desired force and landing safely on a landing ramp. It is further desirable to provide a toy vehicle play set incorporating a measuring apparatus for accurately estimating the desired flight distance of the vehicle, ensuring consistent launching of a vehicle. It is further desirable to provide an apparatus capable of adjusting the distance to be traveled by the vehicle to match the gap created between a launching ramp and a landing ramp. It is also desirable to provide a toy vehicle play set capable of measuring the horizontal and/or vertical distance traveled by a vehicle, in flight, when launched from a launching ramp.